Did your website disappear from Google search—or never show up at all? If your website is indexed on Google but doesn’t show up for your own name or brand, yet appears normally on Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo, you’re not alone.
This article documents a recurring visibility failure in Google Search affecting small, legitimate sites—specifically when Google fails to associate unique brand or personal names with their definitive websites. While we can’t diagnose the internal mechanics of Google, the pattern strongly suggests a breakdown in the retrieval process—one that can affect not only regular search results but now also AI Overviews.
The general expectation is that Google’s systems are robust enough to maintain visibility for well-established sites—if a credible site has been stable for years, it shouldn’t suddenly disappear. But this problem shows that parts of Google’s opaque algorithms can be very sensitive.
In 2019, we experienced a number of requests in quick succession from sites that “vanished from Google,” which brought it to our attention as a documentable problem. As of 2025, sites still face this issue—and many affected sites are new builds that have never surfaced in Google at all, rather than disappearing after long-term visibility.
What does “Indexed but Invisible” mean?
Indexed but Invisible is a recurring Google Search issue where sites are fully indexed but fail to surface for their own brand-name queries—where they are the most relevant result. These sites have no penalties or blocking issues and continue to appear normally in other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo.
We’ve documented the issue on both long-standing domains that suddenly vanish and on newer domains that never surface at all. Google has not formally acknowledged this as a bug, but the recurring pattern points to a systemic failure in how branded queries are sometimes processed and served.
When Google fails to surface these sites, it creates a credibility gap for these individuals and businesses. And many of the sites remain missing from Google SERPs for months or years—until Google is “nudged.” But intervention should not be necessary.
Why This Issue Matters: The recurrence and fixability of the issue suggest a specific, correctable weakness in how Google’s entity resolution systems confirm and serve certain sites—not just an edge-case “SEO” failure. The direct real-world consequences for individuals and small businesses suffering from this invisibility can be significant. This warrants attention from Google’s search quality and indexing teams.
Update: This visibility gap now extends into Google’s AI Overviews. In one recent case, a direct search for an established architect’s domain triggered an AIO response claiming the site “does not have any search results available, indicating it is either not a registered domain, or a new domain with no online presence.” In reality, the domain has been live since 2015. In other words, the Indexed-but-Invisible issue doesn’t just suppress links in the SERPs—it can generate misleading claims that a business does not exist.
Editorial Note: We first used the phrase “Indexed but Invisible” in May 2025 to describe this specific Google Search failure. Since then, some people have loosely applied the phrase to generic SEO challenges—but that’s not what this is. This is a serving-layer failure inside Google Search itself.
When Indexing Doesn’t Equal Visibility
Google has addressed the fact that being indexed doesn’t guarantee visibility, citing factors like low relevance or weak engagement. This is expected for low quality pages, but it shouldn’t be confused with this particular issue of long-standing genuine sites no longer being visible for brand-name queries.
“Indexed” means Google knows the page exists. “Visible” means it appears in search results. These are not the same. But in theory, if a site is indexed, it should be visible for low-competition branded searches—this issue proves otherwise.
The Indexed-but-Invisible issue isn’t about SEO weakness. It’s a visibility failure where Google fails to serve the definitive site that clearly represents the entity being searched.
We’ve tracked this issue since 2019 across personal brand, portfolio, and business sites. It’s obscure, easy to misdiagnose, and often dismissed as standard SEO underperformance. As of 2025, we continue to regularly hear from sites facing this issue.
We labeled it “Indexed but Invisible” because it’s a pattern where a site is fully indexed in Google, yet for all practical purposes doesn’t appear in results—not even for its own unique name. It’s a visibility gap and it’s fixable, but only through manual intervention.
This problem wears the mask of normal SEO struggle. It looks like “Google being Google,” which is why most site owners—and many SEOs—either misdiagnose it or give up.
This isn’t about “keywords” or chasing traffic for blogs or service pages. It’s simply about being findable when someone types your unique name or business into Google.
What This Issue Is — and What It Isn’t
This article outlines the nature of the issue, who it affects, and why common SEO advice doesn’t apply. If your legitimate website is indexed in Google and vanished from search results, but is still visible on other search engines, this is likely the problem you’re facing.
We give examples below of sites that ranked for branded searches for years, then abruptly disappeared from Google search. Affected sites do not experience a drop in ranking or get deindexed—they simply are no longer served in Google’s SERPs. However, they are still visible on other search engines.
The good news: If your site matches the pattern, it can recover and regain expected positioning—sometimes snapping back into place within a day—even if it’s been missing from Google SERPs for a year or more. Recovery requires human intervention or “nudging,” but not because of anything inherently wrong with your site.
Important: This specific issue does NOT stem from factors blamed in other SEO articles: new domain, manual penalties, security problems, URL removals, noindex directives, low-quality content, robots.txt issues, generic brand name, algorithm update, etc. We’ve also seen it misattributed to DNS configuration, CWV, and page rendering—but none of these are the cause. The core issue lies in Google’s algorithmic ability to reliably serve the definitive online presence for a specific brand.
To be clear: this isn’t about rankings, it’s about a fundamental visibility and serving failure. It’s a disconnect in Google’s ability to confidently map a branded query to the intended primary online presence.
Note: If a new website is not showing up on Google, you need to allow time for Google to crawl the site. That said, when built and launched correctly, most new sites should be findable for brand name or personal name within 1-2 weeks. If you are struggling with a new site, schedule an SEO consultation.
And if you’re dealing with standard SEO ranking or AI visibility issues, or an algorithmic traffic drop, we can help—get in touch.
Affected Sites Share These Traits
Several years ago, a pattern emerged when we received multiple requests related to “why did my website disappear from Google” and “my Squarespace site disappeared.” Each of the sites had historically ranked for their brand or personal name—as expected—but suddenly stopped being served for those searches.
For small sites, branded or name-based queries are often the primary way people find them. These particular sites deserved to rank, and surfacing at the top of Google should not have required our intervention.
Recurring characteristics we’ve seen across affected sites:
Site appears in Google’s index as expected. site:example.com
Domain active for years. The individual or business is well-established in their field. The site represents the expected, trustworthy, relevant result when searching for the person or brand.
Update: We’ve since seen many newer domains encounter the same issue, but inexperienced site owners often assume the invisibility is just part of the SEO learning process—it’s not.
Previously ranked, then vanished: Affected sites originally ranked in Google (typically position one) for a brand search for years, then abruptly disappeared, despite still being indexed.
Site missing ONLY from Google search results. Sites continue to be served on other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.
Common, broad-stroke SEO answers do not apply. Manual penalties, security issues, URL removals, pages marked noindex, robots.txt, etc. are not factors.
Portfolio site or personal brand website.
Update: The issue impacts personal brand sites, portfolio sites, and businesses.
Site hosted on Squarespace with no previous issues.
Update: Since first publishing this article, sites built on other platforms such as WordPress have turned up. Creatives and small businesses often build on Squarespace, which would explain the greater number of Squarespace requests.
Why This Happens
The site owners are not to blame. They’d built simple sites that historically ranked well for branded searches. They often assumed their disappearance was tied to a change—a redesign, switching templates, or adding SSL—but we’ve seen the issue on sites where nothing changed at all.
After realizing there was a problem, the site owners followed common advice found in forums—add content, optimize images, fix your headings, wait—but none of it worked. These factors are not why the sites went missing from Google search.
Google isn’t actively punishing these sites. Instead, it seems to be an algorithmic anomaly where these sites get “stuck” in a negative state—a persistent, deep-seated miscalibration that prevents them from being served. Even without knowing the exact cause, the edge case issue is consistently fixable—manual intervention forces a re-calibration.
Fixable — But Only With Intervention
By all normal measures these sites should be visible on Google—regardless of platform, template, subpar structure or even sparse content. We don’t guarantee results, but every site we’ve assisted so far has regained expected visibility.
Again though, these recoveries should not have required our involvement. Yet, in each case, only direct intervention led to resolution. Notably, every other search engine displayed the sites as expected.
What not to do? Don’t assume it will work itself out. Many sites were invisible on Google for months—sometimes years.
What to do? Google’s documentation is the best starting point for DIY troubleshooting. There’s no valid reason a fully indexed legitimate site should remain invisible for months. If your efforts haven’t resolved the issue, consider hiring experienced help.
Note, forum advice is often well-intentioned but not always accurate—especially for edge cases like this. A common suggestion for portfolio sites is to “add more text,” but content volume isn’t an issue. If you’re stuck, it’s important to consult someone familiar with visibility-specific problems, not just general SEO theory.
Case Studies
We’ve worked with small, owner-built sites for years, and seen firsthand that Google is usually very forgiving of the typical “mistakes” they make. Despite that, we assumed the early reports of sites “disappearing” were either user error or they’d been impacted by a known bug. But there was nothing technically “wrong” that should have blocked these sites from Google’s results.
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See examples below of some early sites that helped us document the pattern, dates indicate when we worked with the website owner.
These were legitimate, indexed sites that previously appeared for exact-match branded queries—then vanished from Google, yet remained visible on every other search engine. They reappeared only after manual intervention. This behavior is not consistent with how ranking systems are expected to function, particularly concerning the fundamental visibility of established entities for their own names.
February 2020: Liz Markus (artist)
March 2020: Jo Carkner (production designer)
July 2020: Steven Yavanian (landscape architect). This site was an established small business with a Google Business Profile.
January 2021: Field Kallop (artist). The site owner reported the site had been missing from Google search for a year: “I tried re-indexing my site and doing a few other things suggested by the SEO optimization tutorials on Squarespace, but nothing has worked. I would like some help fixing this so that people interested in my work can find my site more easily.”
June 2021: Jesse Heath (filmmaker). The site owner reported the site was dropped from Google SERPs in July 2020 and remained missing for a year until we worked together. This intentionally unstructured site demonstrates that factors like word count or traditional UX and SEO design principles aren’t the issue.
July 2021: August D’Angelo (screenwriter). This site was built on Squarespace 7.1 and newer than other examples (launched early 2020). Without a successful track record in search or a known “brand name,” the site owner didn’t have the same conviction as others that his personal site should be findable.
September 2021: Nina Djacic (director of photography)
June 2022: Nancy Pollock (fiber artist)
January 2023: Marlena Maduro Baraf (author). This site was of particular interest because it is an author website we designed back in 2016. The issue came to our attention when we tried to reference the site with another author. This site had been operating as expected for years—it demonstrated that the Google issue is not related to a site migration, a redesign, stagnation, or implementing SSL.
It’s not uncommon for sites fighting this issue to be missing from Google for months prior to intervention, but sites can resume normal and expected visibility in Google Search.
In every case we’ve worked on, sites have been fully restored—without redesigns, content overhauls, or platform changes. While we may apply small, non-critical site adjustments, these do not account for the long disappearances—or sudden recoveries.
Note, not every site recovers instantly—timelines have varied from a day to a few weeks—with one recent case taking longer than usual to recover, a rare exception that’s stretching the timeline we normally see for recovery.
Other Impacted Sites
There are other businesses and individuals still missing out on Google visibility due to this issue. Why? Some site owners simply don’t realize their brand vanished from search.
One site owner reached out about an unrelated problem and only then realized her site was missing from Google—she’d been using DuckDuckGo as her default search engine and had no idea. And others give up out of sheer frustration.
Most of the site owners we’ve helped knew, without a shadow of doubt, that they should be searchable and findable. But less experienced creatives or new businesses may not push for an answer if they lack the same certainty about their name recognition or brand reputation, or assume this is just “how Google works.”
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Back when we first wrote this article, quick forum searches turned up many more sites matching the criteria outlined above, some examples:
Two long-time professional photographers.
An illustrator was missing from Google SERPs for at least 3 years: “Squarespace website missing from only Google results.”
A production designer said: “Domain not appearing on Google search but first result on Bing and Yahoo.”
A fine art photographer asked: “My website disappeared from Google search.”
A graphic designer asked: “Why has my website stopped appearing on Google search results?”
A small business was impacted: “Website shows in site: but not in Google search results.”
Scattered forum reports show how often this issue is misdiagnosed, dismissed, or quietly abandoned. Over the years, we’ve heard from politicians, journalists, creatives, brick-and-mortar business owners, professional service providers, musicians, professors, and even an ex-Googler.
What to Do if You’re Affected?
To our knowledge, Google hasn’t formally addressed this issue, and many sites remain invisible far longer than they should. Small businesses in particular are at risk because Google Search Console can still show activity from a Google Business Profile, masking the fact that the actual website is absent from search results.
If you’re trying to resolve it yourself, start with the basics: verify that your site is indexed, submit your sitemap in Search Console, confirm no noindex tags, robots.txt blocks, or URL removals. Google’s own support documentation is the right first step.
Some sites return quickly with a bit of prodding. But without the right intervention, many stay stuck for months or even years. It isn’t about a single missing setting or tag. It’s about making sure every signal lines up so Google can confidently serve your site.
If the problem affects your credibility or revenue, that’s the moment to stop guessing and bring in help. If you’ve exhausted standard SEO checklists and support threads—and waiting isn’t an option—we offer hands-on help to restore visibility.
Note: For select projects that could help illustrate the broader impact of this Google issue, our fee may be adjusted in exchange for case study participation.
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